Salvation as Humanization in Hinduism

The relation between salvation and humanization is a fundamental issue debated within
all religions.1 It is the theme of humanization which provides the most relevant point of entry for
any Christian dialogue with these religions on Salvation. Paul Devanandan summarized the
ferment in Hindu religion, philosophy and society as a rethinking of the relation between the
ultimate and historical destinies of men.2 Even from the different angles such as social and
spiritual it is evident that the Hinduism is dealing with the question of the relation between man’s
ultimate spiritual destiny and the regeneration of human society in the modern Indian history.
The Hindu leaders are convinced that the traditional doctrines about the destiny of man and the
underlying view of world-life and history can be re stated in terms of their own fundamental
spiritual core to give support to the new sense of historical destiny to which India is awake today.
Swami Vivekananda’s affirmation of the sphere of morality, personality and history as means to
the realm of the impersonal Ultimate, and his equation of the atavistic selflessness with the
personalist unselfishness are all efforts at justifying the new sense of historical destiny of modern
India under the classical understanding of salvation as liberation from world and history. 3 Life is
one and in it there is no distinction of sacred and secular.4

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